But don’t worry: the minister has declared that it won’t be hackable, and we all know how well politicians understand hacking, and how well hackers behave when politely asked. And of course no hackers might want to use that information for nefarious purposes neither.

Do these people have no idea? For a start, when you set up a system, computer-based or not, that benefits only the administrators, it follows as night follows that bright part of the diurnal rotation it’s hard to sleep through that it will end up being abused, because there’s no motive for the administrators to ensure that it is accurate and secure. It’s databasing for the sake of it. A bit like freebasing, I think, only for public servants and politicians.